German Amateur Radio Station DO1CA

Welcome to my Website!

A warm welcome...

...to my website do1ca.de.

First of all, I must apologize for my bad English, but i hope you can understand me. Most german amateur radio websites are unfortunately written in german language only. Due to the fact that radio amateurs have contacts around the world, I decided to offer my website also in English. I hope you like the page despite a possibly not quite correct translation... ;)

Here you will find informations about me and my beautiful amateur radio hobby. My name is Martin and i was born in 1977. I grew up in Hankensbüttel, a small village on the edge of the "Luneburg Heath" in Lower Saxony. The "HF-virus" infected me at the tender age of 8 or 9 years when I soldered my first MW-Radio. It was also the same time I got my first handheld CB-Band radio from my parents for Christmas. Since then, "Bavaria Fox", "Black Angel" or "Firebird" were present on CB radio every day. But most young people who were interested in CB usually lost these interests very quickly, but not me. So OM Siegfried, DD3OE (SK) installed my first λ/2; at my parents' house, and with that, the "Start1" from DNT was in the house. During this time I met Daniel, "CB Asterix" for the first time, he is now licensed as DL1OFC ).

Over the next few years, I was, with few interruptions, very active. The first own car also enlarged our "radio community" and we were already taking part in very much mobile competitions. Even until 2001, i always had a radio in my car, but it was no longer possible to build an antenna at home and the number of active CB-Radio operators always got smaller. After my military service and the associated long absence from home and yard, i came back in contact with Daniel, who had just completed his examination of the newly established amateur radio class 3. This was the way i came to amateur radio. Favored by the vocational training as an industrial mechanic and the technical interests and experiences in electronics, i got the amateur radio class 3 (a pure VHF/UHF license) in August of 2001 after 2 weeks of intensive preparation. Since then, I carry the callsign DO1OMS.

This was followed by two years of active time. Due to work and family, and also by a change of residence, this time was followed by seven years of inactivity. During this time I also learned the object-oriented programming in PHP5, and of course HTML, XHTML, some Javascript and everything necessary for web programming. I hope you can see the fruits of these efforts on this website. In the year 2010, I came through a career change back again closer to the "old country", and thus i returned to amateur radio. Meanwhile, my license was converted to a "CEPT Novice Licence"​​, so I am now also allowed to operate on some HF bands with the moderate transmitter power of 100 watts and up to 75 watts on VHF/UHF. These were the prerequisites for my present activity. My first steps on shortwave bands were made with a Yaesu FT-757GXII that I had bought for a little money on Ebay. So the first 250 QSO in SSB came into the logbook, which were performed in the absence of any resonant antenna only in the 10m band. A short time later I bought my first "brand-new", an ICOM IC-718 HF transceiver at Funktechnik Dathe. One day I visited the Youtube-Channel of Randy, K7AGE and found his videos regarding the "digital modes". Fascinated by the simplicity of the technics and the almost infinite possibilities of the "digital modes", I made my first 120 PSK31 QSO with the "microphone-in-front-of-speakers" Interface, before I bought a suitable interface for my transceiver.

Since this time, the "digital modes" became my main field of activity - and they still are today.

Dear OM, hope to meet you on the bands, whether in the contest or in daily operations.